Birthday Boys
by robert3A-SN
Summary: Stan doesn't want an 11'th birthday party after his 10'th birthday party led to so much misery. No one can understand what it's like to have a birthday tainted like that - no one except Butters, that is. Written for Stan's actual birthday on October 19.


"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Stanley, happy birthday to you!"

Stan wasn't even sure he wanted to hear that song at a normal hour today. But hearing it first thing in the morning from Butters at his front doorstep was starting to push it. Especially when he started singing the lesser known "How old are you now?" second verse of the birthday song.

"Butters, I'm 11 now, you know that," Stan said with as much energy as was possible at 7:30 a.m.

"I know, silly!" Butters responded in a chipper way that didn't fuel Stan with high hopes for the rest of this conversation. "But I thought I'd practice in case we sang a longer birthday song for your party today!"

Stan then figured that this might be a blessing in disguise. If he broke the news to Butters and survived, maybe things would go better than he hoped when he told Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Wendy and the others later. "Actually….I'm leaning towards not having a party today."

"No party? Did your mom ground you for blinking too fast at the dinner table, is that why?" Stan didn't even want to begin getting into Butters' deranged family issues right now.

"No…..but I don't want a party anyway. Not after the last one went so bad."

The subject of last year's birthday party was still touchy, even though things did finally reverted to the status quo just like how everything else does in South Park. Even Randy was keeping whatever crazy memories and observations he had about last year to himself, and Sharon barely said a word when Stan told her yesterday that he wasn't in the mood for a party.

That made Stan so relieved that he forgot to call his friends and tell them the party was off. So even though they had already bought their presents and prepared to head to Stan's house later today, he had to tell them hours beforehand that it was cancelled. That would probably make them think that Stan was a dick, but they probably thought that enough times in this last year anyway.

"What do you mean the last one went bad?" Butters' naivety and cluelessness was tolerable in small doses, but not in this big one. "The pizza and presents were great, and Eric even let me touch five of the gifts his mom got him! All that icky stuff only happened to you after the party anyway!"

"But it wouldn't have happened without that party," Stan reminded him.

"Oh, I'm sure no one will give you another Tween Wave CD! So everything should be hunky-dory this time!"

"Not if someone gets me some other present that makes me a cynical asshole. Or makes my mom and dad go crazier than usual, or makes me hate all you guys, or makes me miserable even after everything gets back to normal!"

"Oh…..hmm, would a big toy truck make you do that? I, I mean, not that there's a specific reason I asked…." Butters tried to cover up.

"Forget it, Butters, keep your truck, I won't be needing it," Stan insisted.

"What? Why, why would I need to keep a truck from you, that's silly! But, um, is there anything you wouldn't want me to keep away from you? Like something that's worth about $25 bucks? It'd be more, but my allowance got cut when I left too many fingerprints on my food- I, I mean…."

"Goddammit Butters, I don't want you to get me any presents! I don't want presents and I don't want a birthday!" Stan yelled to try and finally get the point across.

"But everyone has a birthday, you can't just skip over an entire day," Butters nitpicked. "Unless….did someone from Imaginationland imagine over a time machine for your birthday present? That's the least they could do for ya, I'll say!"

"Butters, don't you get it?" Stan asked rhetorically. "I never want to celebrate my birthday again! No cake, no presents, no Imaginationland time machines, nothing! I just want to do nothing and get this day over with!"

Stan still didn't trust Butters to get it even then, so he kept going on. "Do you know I still have an alcohol bottle in case things get too shitty or predictable? Do you know that my mom still wishes sometimes she didn't have to 'go with what she knew?' Do you know that I still act like more of a dick to my best friend and girlfriend than I did before last October 19? Do you know that I'll never be happy or shitty enough to forget what last year did to me? What it's still doing in smaller ways right now?"

Stan still went on before Butters could even answer. "Of course you wouldn't. You're too happy and clueless to get infected, and that makes you both stupid and lucky. You wouldn't know what it's like to get screwed over by your birthday…..your special day that's now too tainted by rotten memories to be special ever again."

When Butters didn't answer, Stan figured he finally got through Butters' bubble, and prepared to head back inside to prepare for school. Once he got through breaking the news to the others, he could do nothing the rest of the day and avoid further disaster on October 19 after all. All he'd have to do is the same thing for 80 or 90 more years, and maybe the world would leave him alone on October 19 before the next century started.

"9/11."

Of all the possible responses from Butters, that one seemed a little dark from him – but it was as confusing as Stan expected from him. "What, Butters?"

With that, Butters broke back into song again, albeit with less cheerful gusto than before. "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me! Happy birthday on 9/11, happy birthday to me!"

Butters then spoke instead of singing an extra verse. "Now look here, mister, you ain't the only one with a tainted birthday here! Your bad stuff happened after October 19 last year, but I got a national tragedy attached to my exact birthday forever! And since you fellas never came to a lot of my birthday parties, that didn't make me feel better about 9/11, did it? Well, did it?"

There was no way that Stan could answer that rhetorical question, even if Butters seemed to want him to anyway. "Fine, I'll just have to tell you that the answer was yes then!"

"So….then you understand why I don't want a birthday! That means you won't stop me from not having one!" Stan concluded.

"That's wrong, Stan! See, that's the thing you shouldn't have taken a guess at! No more guessing until I finish my story, okay?"

Since Stan stayed quiet that time, Butters went on with his story. Given the pattern so far, he'd probably start guessing again the next time he paused, so he figured he should get it all out at once.

"Now it's true I didn't have a good birthday for most of my life. But they've been getting better since the third grade! I mean, did you see my last birthday party last month? You kinda did since you were there, but did you really see it? Everyone I knew came for the first time ever, and you even went although you hate birthdays now! That was the first time I was popular enough to have all my friends come over and give me presents….and it was the first time no one other than Eric was in on a birthday prank against me! Heck, you guys even stopped Eric before he got me in enough trouble to get me grounded for three weeks…..you would have let him go on until I was grounded for three months or got slapped around before!"

"That really showed me that I'm starting to be one of the guys…..I mean, people other than Eric don't pick on me as much anymore, and I even get to beat Eric a few times now! Maybe you still don't like me all that much, but you're too indifferent to hurt me that much now too! I'm a tween now, and more people like me, or at least don't punch me around that much, than ever before in my whole life! And now I'll remember the last 9/11 as a big milestone of that fact, and not as a bad anniversary!"

"I guess you don't understand that since you always had friends and people that liked you at your parties. They're even gonna come to your party this year even though you've not having one! Yeah, you tried like the dickens to push them all away last year, even Kyle! But they're still here for ya, aren't they? Even Wendy's still there, and you didn't even have her at last year's party!"

Butters finally had to take a breath, and as he had figured, Stan took his turn to speak up. "But that's the same old, same old….I still don't know if I like that…."

"But your same old same old has friends that you couldn't lose even after last year! I had a rotten same old same old until it got better, even on 9/11! If you got a good same old same old except for one little gift that screwed up one little birthday, then who are you to complain, mister?"

Despite how his use of the word "mister" didn't make him sound as tough as he thought, Butters still got Stan to stay quiet. "Look….all I'm saying is I hated my birthday until the last few years, thanks to you guys. If I can like my 9/11 birthdays again, why can't you like your 10/19 birthdays too? Especially when you got parents that don't ground you, best friends that don't prank you, and even girlfriends in general to be there anyway? Just stop thinking about the rotten stuff for at least one day…..I try to do it for 365 of them and one 9/11 a year, and it works a bit more now."

Butters had more personalities than the average person, and one of them happened to be wiser and more insightful than the others. But now that this personality had exhausted his knowledge, he left and let Butters go back to his default, obliviously happy mode. "Well, I guess I'd better get going before I miss the bus and Dad takes away three of my birthday gifts! See ya, Stan!"

Butters then skipped away as if nothing had happened in the last few minutes, although that was harder for Stan to do.

The last time Butters had put Stan's pain into proper perspective, it was when he was in Goth mode for the first time. Since that happened over a year and a half and one Wendy breakup ago, it was easier for Stan to forget that message in his old age. But it might be harder to forget this latest instance of a naïve, clueless, wimpy Butters proving to have more insight and wisdom than an emo Stan.

It was still a default position to think that Butters was retarded for taking so much abuse – and that it was too faggy to actually help him instead of laughing at his misfortune. But they still were more willing to let him be around them now, at least. In any case, the fact that he had virtually nothing and was still so happy about it still presumably made him look like an idiot.

Yet compared to someone who still had more in spite of doing everything to lose it…..and who was more shaken over the aftereffects of one bad birthday present than Butters was shaken over year after year of 9/11 birthdays….who was the idiot?

That at least warranted a little experiment.

Stan went to the kitchen and saw his mother preparing breakfast. His father wasn't up yet, which probably bode well for this little talk. "Mom?" Stan asked tentatively, before Sharon turned around with what looked to be a slightly forced smile. To that, Stan wondered just how loudly Butters was giving his speech, and how loudly Stan was arguing beforehand.

"Yes sweetie?" Sharon still managed to ask.

"Can….can you sing the birthday song for me? Like you did…..last year?" Stan was about to ask her to do it like two years ago – but perhaps mentioning his last normal birthday instead of the one that screwed him up was counterproductive.

Nevertheless, Sharon bent down to her soon, took a breath, and sung softly like she would have on any other birthday. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Stanley….. happy birthday to you."

Despite the memories she was fighting with on this anniversary, she was still here to sing happiness for her son. In fact, she sang it with as much affection as she did on any other October 19. Despite Butters' screwed up birthday date, he was still looking forward to celebrating on every 9/11 with people that might never like him as much as he liked them. In fact, he tried to make Stan feel better about his birthday before even his best friends tried to – or may have thought to.

No matter what had happened over the past year, these constants were still there. He hadn't pushed them away and they were here to wish him a better year anyway. That was really what birthdays were all about…..or at least thinking that's what they were all about was better than the alternatives.

If Sharon Marsh and Butters Stotch could still think that way after years of disappointment and hardships…were Stan Marsh's excuses really that good?

There was only one more way to really test it for sure.

"Mom…..can we talk about my party again?"

Over 12 hours later, after Stan had helped Sharon clean up the house - and after Cartman actually failed to make Butters throw up after he finished his big piece of cake – Stan ruled that his findings were….different than he would have imagined at the start of his 11'th birthday.

Maybe it wasn't premature to wonder if his 12'th birthday would bring even better findings as well.


End file.
